State Department leaker sentenced to 13 months

4/2/14 3:08 PM EDT

A former State Department contractor who admitted leaking the contents of a highly-classified report on North Korea to Fox News has been sentenced to 13 months in prison, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

Stephen Kim pleaded guilty in February to one count of making an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information. Last week, prosecutors urged a federal judge to approve a 13-month sentence as part of a plea deal, arguing that the move will prevent further damage to national security.

Kim leaked information concerning the military capabilities and preparedness of North Korea contained in a top secret intelligence report to James Rosen, who was Fox's State Department correspondent at the time. Rosen published a story on Fox's website in June 2009 saying that U.S. intelligence, based on sources in North Korea, expected the secretive Asian country to conduct nuclear tests.

“Stephen Kim was a sophisticated consumer of intelligence who knew the enormous damage that could be done by disclosing highly classified information about North Korea’s military capabilities,” U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said in a statement. “He is now headed to federal prison to pay the price for betraying the trust of his country and placing our nation’s security at risk. Hopefully this prosecution will deter others who are considering compromising our nation’s most sensitive secrets.”

Rosen, who is now Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, was also targeted by federal investigators, who described him as a possible “co-conspirator” in order to search his personal e-mails and phone records. The uproar over the tactic, also used on several reports at the Associated Press, led to the Justice Department to enact new media guidelines earlier this year.